Friday, March 13, 2009

Downloading the CPU !!

I am Back !! Well, almost !! (Not sure how many of you have been waiting for this day)

I will be the first one to admit (albeit a bit hesitantly) that I myself have been a silent spectator to my own blog,which was written nearly four years ago with such an enthusiasm and which somehow managed to attract rave review comments from its few-and-far-between readers. Plenty of water has passed by under the bridge, ever since I started blogging. Back then, I wanted to prove a point to some of my critics that despite being a solid Bihari (no mixing-up with other state cultures) coming from an all-Hindi background I was still good enough to write and write good in English. Now situation is a lot different and I have (probably) nothing to prove in terms of my language credentials, having been able to survive , rather thrive , in the corporate environment for more than 4 years and I am sure you will agree, communication (oral as well as written) plays a significant role in your career-growth.

Even though I have been leading a decent life(At times painfully-slow in terms of monetary and professional gains) during this time-period, few of my friends (most notably Ritu and dear friend Shivraj) have told there are still enough ebb-and-flow moments in my life, warranting a documentation of sorts. So after deliberating for a while, I decided, probably its high time I should resurrect my blog. So here is a piece directly from my old college days

A normal chit-o-chat is going on inside the class-room. I have been a witness to so many of them being a back-bencher all my life. We are in the middle of a 5 minute break, guaranteed to provide some sort of respite to helpless students, who are preparing themselves to tolerate their not-so-favourate teacher for next one hour. The teachor himself is busy, sipping a full cup-of-tea during the break and occasionally going through the cheat-sheet that he brought along with him, when he entered inside the class-room. All I could make out of this conversation is "Internet is coming at door-steps of each and every individual" staying inside the campus, goes without saying only those chaps who already own a PC :). Trust me there are not many falling outside this class..After all only a fool would say no to an opportunity of buying his life's first Personal Computer at half its original price (half of the cost was to be generously borne out by its rich Alumnus members and two of the PSU banks, having branches inside the campus, are more than willing to finance the rest-half)

Ever since this news broke out inside the campus, this has been the talk of the town, finding mention almost everywhere, be it inside the institute-campus, hostel-wings, class-rooms, college-canteens and even during defecation in toilets, when students patiently wait in a queue for their turn (You may find it surprising, but back then we didn't had too many of them, probably 1 or 2 per floor accommodating about 30 odd students)

Here is a verbatim script of this conversation which lasted about a minute of so.

Rajesh: You know within 2-3 weeks time all of us should be able to access internet sitting inside our rooms.

Suman: Really !! (He is probably unaware of WWW mystery and find this hoopla surrounding computers and more specifically Internet, somewhat amusing.Since he hadn't had any encounter with a computer key-board till date, We forgive him for his naivety.

Abhi: Yes, I also heard that from some of my seniors who are involved in this project, that it will be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days an year.

Rajesh: WoW !! This is unbelievable. Life will be so easy for us with internet at our doorsteps, wouldn't it be ?? No more standing in the queue outside CIC(Computer and Informatics Centre) rooms, waiting for guys to hang up inside(who are busy doing all sorts of unproductive things that you could possible do with Internet)

Abhi: Haan, we should be able to download and play our favourte songs, softwares we always wanted our computers to be loaded with, newspapers/magazines (including archives) we wish could be available to us anytime we feel like reading, computer games that always fascinated us.

Rajesh: Yes, the only thing missing from our armoury would be a CD-Writer. If we can have that, we will have almost everything in our arsenal.

Suman: Are Kuchh nahin, Internet rahega to CD-Writer bhee download kar lenge (Nothing to worry about folks. If we have internet, we should be able to download a CD-Writer from Web !!)

As the entire class-room burst into laughter, Suman is left somewhat confused, wondering if he passed off any foolish remark or said anything wrong !!

PS: Suman is an IIT KGP Computer Science Grad, who was in his later half of 2nd yr UG, when 'this conversation' took place. Presently he is working in India's own Silicon Valley Bangalore for a Fortune 100 company based in California. Back then he was wet behind the ears, but is now confident enough not to be afraid of locking horns with IT industry vetarans.

Ohh, By The Way Don't tell his employer, about this episode, for his employer may find this a strong enough reason to hand him a pink-slip during these slow-down times !!!

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About Me

Following two blog-posts pretty much covers everything about me
http://sumansays.blogspot.com/2005/04/story-of-iit-kgp-computer-science.html
http://sumansays.blogspot.com/2010/05/icebreaker-speech-toastmasters.html
If there is anything more you are interested in knowing, feel free to ask me directly :-) by sending an email to sumanjee@gmail.com or a tweet @sumanjee